Oscars 2020: Joker leads pack with 11 nominations | Sunday Observer

Oscars 2020: Joker leads pack with 11 nominations

19 January, 2020

The nominations for this year’s Academy Awards have been announced, with Joker leading the pack with 11 nods.

The comic book villain origin story is up for best picture, best director and best actor for Joaquin Phoenix, plus eight other awards. The Irishman, 1917 and Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood follow with 10 nominations each. Britain’s Cynthia Erivo, Anthony Hopkins, Jonathan Pryce and Florence Pugh are all up for acting prizes. Joker’s 11 nominations equals its tally at the British Academy Film Awards, whose nominations were announced last week.

At the Oscars, though, at least one acting contender - Harriet star Erivo - will be from a BAME background. Erivo said Harriet’s two nominations were “beyond anything I could have ever imagined” and were “more than a dream come true”.

The film’s other nomination, for best song, comes for Stand Up, which the Tony-winning actress both sang and co-wrote. Yet the Oscars are sure to receive some censure for announcing another all-male line-up in its best director category. Greta Gerwig, nominated for best director in 2018 for Lady Bird, did not make the cut again with Little Women. Pugh called her omission both “sad” and “hard to navigate”. “She is in this film in the writing and the directing [and] in every single performance,” she continued.

Only five women have ever been nominated for the best director Oscar and only one - The Hurt Locker’s Kathryn Bigelow - has ever won. Actress Issa Rae pointedly offered “congratulations to those men” as she revealed the nominations alongside actor John Cho on Monday.

Like Joker, The Irishman, 1917 and Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood are all up for the best picture prize.

The other nominees are Ford vs Ferrari (released in the UK as Le Mans 66), Jojo Rabbit, Little Women, Marriage Story and South Korean film Parasite. Phoenix said he felt “honoured and humbled” by his nomination and congratulated his fellow nominees for giving “inspiring performances that have enriched our art form”. He is joined in the best actor category by Marriage Story’s Adam Driver, Once Upon a Time’s Leonardo DiCaprio, Pain and Glory’s Antonio Banderas and The Two Popes’ Pryce.

The Welsh actor told BBC Radio Wales he had “written off” his chances of a nomination after missing out on an award at the Golden Globes. “I was much more excited than I expected to be,” the 72-year-old said of his first Oscar nomination. “I felt quite emotional really. It’s been a long time coming.” Driver, who was up for best supporting actor last year for BlacKkKlansman, said he felt “honoured and incredibly grateful to represent the people who made Marriage Story”.

-BBC.com

 

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